A Change of Face
by superstudentnursekate
Summary: Teddy Altman has been left devestated by the death of her husband but can the process of grief allow her to come to terms with this tragedy?
1. Chapter 1

**A Change of Face**

**Teddy Altman**

'_There's too much blood.'_

We give a life to save another.

'_There's no output.'_

We're surgeons. It's what we do.

'_Stay with me... Stay with me...'_

There are those we can fix, those whose hope we can restore...

_Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep_

And there are those who aren't so lucky.

'_Time of death 8:52pm'_

These are the people whom have children, parents or with husbands and wives.

These are the people that suffer the most as hope of life is lost.

These are the people whom are life behind in a sea of grief, with memories they are afraid will at some point fade.

I was one of those people.

I was a wife.

_Was._

I used to ask myself every day what I had done to deserve such a wonderful man.

I wasn't a child who ate all her greens or wished for her fairytale ending.

Truthfully, as I grew older and began to see the world for what it really was, I practically gave up on settling down.

Not at any point had I considered leaving my free spirited life behind in favour of a stable home, a stable job or, for that matter, a stable husband.

But there I was, all of a sudden, lost in this life with a man I had barely known a year but felt like I had known almost my entire life. What had started out as business has blossomed into so much more, and had allowed me to become another person I think.

Henry.

He enabled me to discover a passion for something other than surgery. Besides how he felt for me, I guess that was the one other new part of my life I thanked him for.

_I had become a person._

I was taking time off from work to paint the house, missing surgeries if my shift had ended to go home for home cooked food and a movie...

Now I can barely find the words to describe how the loss I have felt has changed me once more.

Henry.

My darling husband.

He would hate how I have been blaming myself. I know he would but how can I not?

I should have been there. Damn, maybe even I should have been performing his surgery.

But I wasn't.

I was helping another person, saving their life so they could live to see another day with their family.

I was helping them when I should have been helping him.

How should that not haunt me?

I feel that guilt with every flutter in my chest, and with every gentle close my eyes take as I move through the day, knowing they won't capture another image of him. At times, I barely feel like I can breathe.

But I guess that's normal right?

_I'm a mess just like any other ordinary wife would be._


	2. Chapter 2

_Grief brings with it much more than just a smattering of tear stains or the hope that we won't let those memories slip away before we are ready. _

_No, grief brings much, much more; Guilt, and that feeling that maybe we could have done more to prolong the outcome. It brings to us knowledge that death is much closer than maybe we thought we knew. _

_This is why we choose, most of the time, not to feel. _

_We give up on tears and upturned expressions. _

_Most of the time this is a much safer way to deal with it all. _

_Not to feel means not to hurt. _

_Or so we hope. _

It's not that I am stranger to death.

I have seen so many different people pass away before my eyes, or heard that they had been lost in gun battle from others returning to base. There have been so many deaths that I suppose I have lost count, maybe even lost a sense of really being strong enough to care.

If I had cried, or lost my head with each friend I have lost in the last nine years, I am pretty sure my sanity would be shot.

You could say I have found my own way to deal with each one I hear of. A much safer way that protects my fragility and preserves the energy that remains in me.

_That remained in me._

But...

But everything is at a loss now. I'm empty.

I've cried too may tears, wheezed with too many choking sobs, and tried too many times to keep my composure as people offer their condolences.

At first they hadn't come, my body just settling into a state of shock but soon they seemed to find their feet. I'm not sure they have truly left yet, either, no matter how much I want... need them to.

I'm encased by emotion. I am lost to the white noise that has wrapped itself around me.

I'm walking, blinded by anything that doesn't pass beneath my feet, hopelessly looking to escape everything that is pinning me tightly.

_I have to run._

_I need to run._

But I don't.

I don't because I know no one understands me, no matter how many times they try to soothe me with their words, telling me they know how it feels.

No one would understand why I would need to leave with such haste.

None of them know.

They may have lost parents or friends but none of them of lost their husband.

None of them have lost the one person that they were counting on to keep their heads above water, keep them from drowning.

None of them know.

And I want to scream, tell them to stop aimlessly speaking words that I cannot process but I don't.

I remain silent, numb, arms holding me close to chests and my ears listening to their aimless words, although never truly digesting more than the sound.

I choose not to scream.

I choose to let the tears that remain to dry without my assistance.

I choose to simply sit, stare blankly past the entrance to this room I have found myself in and wait hopelessly for this ache in my chest to pass.

_Waiting for something I know will never happen._


	3. Chapter 3

It's strange how strength is finding me now.

I did not anticipate that strength would be the first thing that would.

I suppose, as Doctors, we misjudge what grief must feel like in those to whom we deliver news. We can walk away, head back to our great lives, leaving those people behind in their sadness. It doesn't matter to us if they are alone, or if they surrounded by others who cannot process another's reaction to death. We, the surgeons, can deliver and forget. It isn't easy to question how we will feel when those we work with, who we respect and care for, deliver news to you.

I thought I might be able for forgive him. I had been great friends with Own Hunt for almost a decade. I thought, in the midst of all of this, that would pull me through.

But it seemed not.

I couldn't even bring myself to look at him the first time he spoke to me. He tried to offer his condolences, his shoulder for me to cry upon but all I felt was a wave of nausea.

The bile rose in my throat, the rest bubbling in my stomach and I had to escape.

Hanging my head limply over the sink, catching sight of my reflection in the mirror further hurt. But there was nothing that could be done to etch away the lines around my eyes or dissolve the disgust I felt towards Owen.

I had become, just in a forty eight hours, a person I no longer recognised.

The process of grief.

I scoff when I think of it like that. The word 'process' seems too clinical, to emotionless. And death is full of emotion; of sadness, loss and of guilt. It is not a process, not to me.

To me, the repercussions of Henry's death, seem like a life sentence.

I'll never see him smile at me across the top of his Sunday paper, or smell the sweetness of his cologne in the bathroom. There will be no lingering kisses, intense passion. Everything he had offered me was lost and to me, that would forever hold me.

But strength, yes strength.

I'm scrambling to my feet slowly, was great difficulty but I am trying.

My therapist tells me with each hour we share together that I am doing remarkably well.

I often question, why then, am I actually seeing a therapist.

But the hospital insists that I do, in some strange way Owen insists that I do. And now matter how much hate I have toward him, I have listened. For an hour each week, I sat and I pour out how I feel to a stranger, whom before now, I hadn't even been aware worked in the hospital.

She's a 'specialist' in death and grief, especially with those whom have lost their spouse. Apparently.

Yet I don't attribute that hour each week to the progress I have made. No, she is a stranger who doesn't know me and didn't know Henry. _My Henry_. For me, this is just a formality so they will allow me to keep operating. If I had lost my passion for cardiothoracics along with my husband... Well, I dread to think I suppose.

I guess my passion, and the drive I have to saving each life that hangs in the balance upon my operating table is what has kept me here.

Kept my head above the water.


End file.
